In January I visited the St

In January I visited the St. James Cemetery in Driftwood.  I had ignored it previously because it’s Catholic except for some Methodists on the west end.  But I found inscriptions for Matthew Eggler, his children George, Roy, Peter, and Katie (Moore), and his son’s father-in-law James Hennessy.  Matthew came from Brienz to Sullivan County NY as a child and ended up working in the tannery at Driftwood.  Many of his descendants live in the Lock Haven/Woolrich area.

     Also in January I solved the “mystery” of Fannie Abbey Puckett by obtaining her death certificate from Santa Clara County in CA.  She was a Jones, born in Crawford County PA and married Jay Abbey.  I traced her parents and grandparents in the census.

     At the end of January I began reading the church records and Familienbuchs of Knittlingen in Wuerttemberg, a process that I finished in May.  All done on microfilm at the local FHC.  Many ancestors including Duerrwaechter and Niedermeier.  The records weren’t the easiest to read, but you become accustomed to the handwriting after awhile.

     In April I visited Marie Hugar in Driftwood, saw the company (tannery) house of William Matthew Eggler, and saw a few photos.  The same day I looked at the Driftwood Catholic church records at the church in Emporium.  Turned out the Eggler clan wasn’t Catholic except for the son Fred who married a Hennessy.  To round out the day, I visited the North Bend cemetery where Egglers are buried.

     In May I once again used the State Historical Library in Madison, WI, a tremendous resource.  One of my objectives was to look at records of Hardin, Shelby, and Spencer Counties in KY and Boone County, IN in search of my ggg grandfather John B. Allen.  In 2001 I discovered that his wife, who I knew only as Jane, was Jane Dillard with ancestry back to a Revolutionary War soldier.  That was an Internet discovery, confirmed by the death certificate of their son James P. Allen, which listed Jane Dillard as the mother.  I found a lot of records for John Allen but none, except in Boone County, for John B. Allen.

     In June I spent several days in the mecca of genealogy, the FHL in Salt Lake City.  I again pursued John B. Allen with no success.  Allen is too common a surname, and he apparently didn’t use John B. until he moved with his family to Indiana.  I tried to trace my wife’s Swedish ancestors.  To do that, you need to know the exact church they attended.  I thought I knew that, but searches of those and surrounding towns proved fruitless. 

     I had success in finding records for Scott County, MN, to which John B. Allen moved and where his daughter Henrietta, my gg grandmother, married Henry David Jones Koons.  I found that they were married by in Shakopee by Rev. Samuel William Pond, one of the famous Pond brothers, missionaries to the Sioux Indians.  I found dates of death for both my gg grandparents.  They both died quite young, Henry D.J. Koons while in service to the government on the Minnesota frontier as an interpreter.  I found that before his death he bought and sold an amazing amount of property, and his probate proceedings went on for years and occupied many pages.  But the really exciting entry was that on December 1, 1863 Henrietta Koons “of Marion in Marion County, Ohio” sold 160 acres of land in Scott County MN.  By 1865 she was back in Scott County.  Why was she in Marion County Ohio?  Suddenly I remembered a Koons history I had seen on the Internet, that Henry Koons of Defiance County Ohio had willed some money to his grandson Henry D. Koons.  Henry Koons of Defiance County in fact lived most of his life, after moving from Berks County, PA, in Marion County.  Surely Henrietta had gone back to Ohio to visit or petition her parents-in-law.  My long search for Henry D.J. Koons had suddenly come somewhere.

    I subsequently used the censuses and the Internet to trace the other descendants of Henry Koons, mostly in Ohio.  I was greatly helped by a wonderful set of records on www.heritagepursuit.com.

     In August the film of the 1930 census for McKean County arrived.  Lacking an index, I went through several boroughs and townships from beginning to end.

     In August Paula Thiel Snellgrove sent me an email asking about my gg grandfather John Thiel.  I knew he was born near Ittersdorf in the Saar of what was then Prussia.  She asked if he was related to her Thiel family that settled south of Buffalo NY.  I ordered, on film, the church records and a Familienbuch for Ittersdorf.  I spent a couple of months going through the records, especially the Familienbuch, which is “cheap genealogy” – you get an awful lot of data without a lot of work.  It appears that my John Thiel is indeed from the same family that emigrated to the Buffalo area.  The only puzzling things are that his declared date of birth is off by four days from the Ittersdorf baptism records and that his parents named two sons John/Johan/Johannes.  I still want to check the Saarlouis church records also.  At the moment I’m collecting the death certificates of all the children of John Thiel.  From at least 1870 onward his wife was Anna Pompi or Pomper.  But the SD certificate of John, born in 1856, says his mother was Theresea Ihn.  Unfortunately, the death certificate of my g grandmother, who was the first born, in Cincinnati in 1852, says the mother’s name was unknown.  So at the moment I’m not sure who that gg grandmother was.  Such is the fate of women in genealogy – often ignored.

     In October Melinda Grimes emailed me about some Oviatt/Acre genealogy in Smethport.  After quite a bit of back-and-forth, we concluded that Mary E. Oviatt had a son Thomas by an unknown father before later marrying Byron Acre.

    I receive a lot of genealogy email.  In addition to those mentioned already, I corresponded with Ruth Larson and Patricia Surber about Young/Dodge surnames in McKean County; Walt Loucks about descendants of the Peter Eggler family, and he also sent me MANY family photos which I am archiving; Lee Davis about Blossom/Eggler genealogy in Montana; Steven Boyer about Boyer/Pattison surnames in McKean County; Jean Ayub about the Van Schepen surname; Jeannie Cunningham about Gifford/Grigsby surnames in McKean County; Mary  Dolata on Riggs/Allen surnames in Scott County, MN; Karan Sloane on Egglers in the Lock Haven area; Karen Dean and Christine Janisch on the Abegglen surname; Jan Shields Metler on the Boyer/Hungerford surnames in McKean  County; Randy Nisbet on the Dooley/Allen surnames in KY/IN; Sharron Beale on the Hennessey/Eggler surnames in Cameron County; Jan Kulcinski on the Kapanke surname in LaCrosse County; Ken Rockwell on the Moody surname in McKean County; Connie Coy Rice on the Koons surname; Jacqueline Lowell-McKinstry on the Smith/Wise surnames in MN; Andrew Junkins on Smith/Eggler surnames in Alabama; Kipp Kippenham and Keith Steiger on Steiger/Anderegg surnames in Wisconsin; Rebecca Caranna on Eggler descendants in WI and MN; Betty Dols, who sent tombstone inscriptions for Koons/Allen in Shakopee, MN; Cloie Brevik on the Herrick surname in MN; Benny Eggler; Daryl Wunrow on Thiel genealogy; Lynn Welter on the Savage surname in NY; Jerry Durrwachter on the Duerrwaechter surname; Carole King Davidson on Carlton B. King, born Carlton Burlingame; Naomi Long on Otto Fox; Jack Estes on the Eggler surname in NY; Lily Kintner sent a picture of the children of Jerome & Flora Weiser Kintner.